Paul Jacob takes on Richard Warman — back in 2007

Around the same time Canadian bloggers started asking questions about Canada’s Human Rights Commissions and its number one complaint-filer, former HRC employee Richard Warman, Paul Jacob at Townhall.com wrote an outstanding column about someone he calls “a particularly nasty piece of work”…

What did Warman do? He filed numerous complaints against “hate speech” websites, and the government took many of those sites down.

(…)

Paul Fromm, a free-speech activist and founder of Canadians Associated for Free Expression — a group defending the worst “hate sites,” and thus said to “have links” with them (how deep those ties are I do not know; the matter irrelevant for my purposes, anyway) — has repeatedly called Warman an “enemy of free speech.” And similar things.

And so what did Warman do?

He sued.

For libel.

And won.

And was awarded $30,000.

Why? The judge ruled that a government official working from duly enacted government policy cannot be an enemy of free speech. That’s just unthinkable!

Yes, in Canada you may not speak the truth about free speech to its official enemies. In Canada, the reason why we must defend even the most vile speech and writing becomes clear: because suppression of it eventually leads to the inability to criticize government.

You know you’ve lost your freedom when you cannot call a censor a censor.